Vintage camper

This is a project I completed recently for a friend who was distanced from her granddaughter due to devorse. When I delivered this 1961 Scotty Siera, she was allowed one weekend with her. I set it up for her at Audubon State Park in Kentucky. Her granddaughter was given option how long she stayed with Mama. After two weeks, they are still camping. I totally restored ground up. Took 3 months and everything built at my new shop. Thanks

This is a great result and (probably) an inspiration for me as I have an old (1956) camper that I have been trying to get going on for several years. What did you use for the interior curved white walls? they look better than new.

Restoring campers is really getting popular. When we go RV’ing we see more and more of them. You did a great job and it looks like it would be a very difficult but fun project.

My neighbor has a 1970’s or 1960’s Airstream, around 16’ sitting at his place rotting. I would love to get it along with the 1962 Suburan sitting there rotting. What a great project they would be. But he will not part with anything in his junk pile.

-- “We all die. The goal isn't to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.” - Chuck Palahniuk

Thanks,, yes I had lots of fun on this. Built interior walls if 1/4 birch. Cabinets are 1/2 cabinet grade ply. Counter top is spalled hickory. The new owners name is Stone so I named it “THE ROLLING STONE”

My wife picked up an old abused late ‘57- to ‘59-ish Jewel travel trailer last year—at least, we’re pretty sure that’s what it is. The registration was completely messed up by previous owners and the VIN stamped on the frame is only partially legible, so I had to use Google image search to try to find a trailer that had the same characteristics. We can only hope to make it look half as nice as yours.

If you don’t mind, I could use a few pointers…but I can do some more googling if you’d rather spend your time in the shop. ;)

How did you bend the 1/4” birch? Did you have to kerf it for the more severe curves, or were you able to bend it some other way? We were going to try using some 1/4” underlayment plywood but it wasn’t bending very well. I don’t think our original front and back interior walls are even 1/8” thick, so I was going to try looking for something thinner. I also thought about getting some “bending plywood” with all the layers oriented in the same direction, but the guy at the hardwood store hadn’t heard of it and suggested kerf bending instead.

That’s such a cool job, Danal, a wonderful reason for doing it, and a successful result. The main thing that shows is that you did this with absolute love. Much respect!

A side note to Rob. I’ve used bending ply recently and it’s great to work with, though you may need to build up layers if it’s going to take strain. You get two different directions of bend – either along the length of the sheet, or across its width. You need to specify. Maybe google it for your area?